XDA News Articles

Making a game is by all means a challenging task. To become successful, a game has to be well written, interesting and fun to play, otherwise it will slowly die buried somewhere in the Google Play Store. If you have an idea how to make an interesting game and would like to find the tool helping you with development, you are certainly in the right place. Almost a decade ago, the GameMaker studio was at its peak. It was quite...

Android applications can be edited in multiple ways. The most convenient way is of course changing the source code in your favorite IDE and compiling it with the provided tools. Unfortunately not every application available for Android is open-source, and therefore easy to edit through Android Studio or Eclipse with ADT. Applications without publicly available source code can also be modified. The well known ApkTool is one option to make some changes, but if you are using Windows as your operating system, XDA Forum...

App development can be done in more than a handful of ways. You can write every single library and line of code from scratch, or can start with a repertoire of publicly available projects and libraries. To give users a nice way of sharing the photos, some social networking applications offer the ability to select multiple images and share them with your friends and colleagues. Similar functionality can be achieved with a library developed a while ago, but its developer has now decided to...

XDA is not only a great source for custom ROMs, kernels, and various modifications for numerous devices--it's also a great place to find tutorials and other materials that help you to understand the Android ecosystem better. These resources then help you on your quest of eventually becoming a developer. Every developer started off not knowing how to code, but learning and ambition can work wonders. Creating your first project can take days or weeks if you are learning just by...

Earlier this week, Google finally pushed the stable version of Android Studio, replacing Eclipse with ADT plugin. It appears that the Mountain View company is on a roll, as they recently announced a very new and experimental toolchain named Jack and Jill. Jack (Java Android Compiler Kit) and Jill (Jack Intermediate Library Linker) are the two tools at the core of the new toolchain. Google is encouraging developers to play with it a bit to see whether or not there...

After months of hard work, the Android team has announced the first stable build of the Integrated Development (IDE) built on the IntelliJ IDEA (Community Edition) Java IDE. Android Studio 1.0 is finally available to download for all major platforms. As such, Android app developers will undoubtedly be very pleased. The first release candidate was released just a few weeks ago. The IDE will be distributed just like Google Chrome, meaning that those of you who want the latest features will be able...

Android app developers have a few options when comes to Android IDEs. One of the most commonly used is the Android Studio. The IntelliJ Studio has been in active development for some time now. Android Studio is nearing its first stable release. As such, the first Release Candidate has been submitted to the Canary channel. The release can still be described as not fully functional. There are a few bugs that still need to be ironed out, but the IDE will...

Google has taken a big step to make its services accessible globally. Since the introduction of paid apps, Google managed to introduce them in over 2/3 countries in the world, but one country was still missing. And as you know by now, this country is China. Over the past year, Google has extended paid apps to 60 countries across the globe including Lebanon, Jordan, Oman, Pakistan, Puerto Rico, Qatar and Venezuela. China is by far the largest new market, with...

A little under two weeks ago, Google let the world know that today, November 3rd, would be forever remembered by Android fanboys as "Lollipop Day." There is quite a lot to be excited about from an end-user perspective, as Lollipop adds quite a bit of user-facing changes such as Material Design, as well as an even greater number of under-the-hood changes. All this Lollipop fun isn't just for end-users, though. Developers also have quite a bit to be excited about,...

Every once in a while, Google updates the Google Play Developer Distribution Agreement. This agreement must be accepted by every developer within one month after changes are published, otherwise certain services may be suspended. The last change was published Septempber 25, 2014, which means tomorrow is the deadline. Here's a copy of the reminder email, which was sent out today to each Google Play Developer. Hello Google Play Developer, Our records have indicated that you have not yet accepted the updated Developer...

Charts give you a way to represent your data in a clear and concise manner. This becomes even more important on mobile devices, where screen sizes require you to provide your data in a straight forward manner, and users expect a simple representation instead of an overwhelming table. There are several libraries that allow you to use charts in your applications already, but HelloCharts by XDA Forum Member lech0 is a new, easy to use library that supports several chart...

When making an application, thinking about its design is often an underestimated but important step. After all, it's what your users see, so it's crucial to keep it clean and intuitive (especially for less technical apps). Depending on the nature of your app, it might be a good idea to plan this step ahead instead of implementing it straight away and testing it as you build it. A paper and pencil are good starting points to get the basic layout,...

Operating system differences are definitely one of the biggest disadvantages in app and game development. Certain OSes use different programming languages, so it's really hard to have your apps available both on Android and iOS. Luckily, there are some software solutions that make development as seamless as possible. One of them is Cocos2d, an open source software framework that can be used for game and app development. With this tool, you will be able to develop an application in a...

When you are developing an app or game, it's always better to test it on physical hardware rather than an emulator. Phones and tablets are optimized to bring the best ARM or x86 experience, and just generally work much better than software images. We don't have to say how expensive a device can be and how difficult is to get one for testing. One of the major OEMs, Sony, has decided to put an end of this rather uncomfortable situation. The company...

There is only one week left to enter the LG Developer Challenge and Win Prizes, such as the LG G Pad or LG G Watch R. Last week we told you about our LG App challenge where you can submit an idea for a development that makes use of LG's QPair SDK. Originally the contest was limited to those with a US shipping address, but after much consideration, we have removed that restriction and everyone should feel free to take...

Floating applications are very popular--not only here at XDA, but in Play Store as well. One of the first OEM that used floating application in its stock firmware was Sony. Small Apps are independent applications that can be used on top of other applications. For example, you can run a small calculator and perform some calculations while browsing a web page. Those apps can be launched from the small apps bar available by pressing the navigation button. Small App can...

ADB and Fastboot are some of the most basic and yet most powerful tools available on Android. We use them practically on a daily basis to get bug reports or simply flash a kernel onto our devices. While these tools are good to the end user, developers may find them a bit limited and may want to enhance their capabilities a bit. If you are a developer and you are looking for all-in-one library, XDA Senior Member k1ll3r8e has something that might interest you. AndroidCtrl.dll is...

Back in mid-late July (gosh, that seems a long time ago now!), we announced that we had paired up with Pebble to offer developers the opportunity to #MakeAwesomeHappen, and be in with the chance of winning a trip to Mountain View, CA, to meet up with Pebble at their Annual Developer Retreat. XDA and Pebble went through every single one of the proposals sent in by developers - we had a tough time selecting the finalists - but in the...

In the past few years, design has become one of the top priorities in the software development cycle. Whether its intuitive layouts or appealing interfaces, users expect more from applications than just basic functions. Delightful animations, meaningful icons, harmonious color schemes--all these subtle factors enhance the overall experience the application provides, and in turn, keep the users satisfied and loyal. This importance of design has carried over to Android too, and good design is now one of the deciding factors that separates an...

Developing an application is a hard and often times ungratifying task. It also requires quite a lot of time and even more focus. No matter how good the application is, it will always contain some bugs that need to be squashed sooner or later. Developers can't detect all the bugs on their own, so they are forced rely on user support requests. The majority of users don't send crash reports though, so it's really hard for developers to track down...

XDA Developers was founded by developers, for developers. It is now a valuable resource for people who want to make the most of their mobile devices, from customizing the look and feel to adding new functionality. Are you a developer?